Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam to Siem Reap, Cambodia

At 2 a.m. on the very first day of our trip, Tiff, Jen and I found ourselves sitting in small plastic chairs on the sidewalk fronting a 24-hour convenience store along De Tham St., Ho Chi Minh’s backpacker district. Having just arrived in Vietnam from our three-hour flight from Manila, we had four hours to spare before our bus ride to Phnom Penh, Cambodia and we didn’t bother renting a hotel room in which to spend such a short amount of time in – we figured there was no need for the typical tourist transition point to ease our way into a strange, foreign land, and instead opted for an immediate immersion into the country we would call home for two weeks.